“What are you saying?”
He ran his hand across his forehead, pushing his hair out of his face. “Maybe your parents were right about us not seeing each other until this is resolved. Once it is…” He let the sentence drift off because he didn’t know if she would stick around once the year was over. He hoped she would. He wanted her to reassure him that she would.
Instead she said, “You’re breaking up with me?”
“Just until this is resolved.”
Her tone became coldly professional. “I see. And I suppose in the meantime, you’ll be dating other women and you expect me to date other men?”
She wasn’t telling him she would stay in Arizona. She was asking if she could date other men. Maybe she’d never been as invested in him as he’d thought. He swallowed back the hurt. “If that’s what you want.”
“What I want apparently doesn’t matter.”
“Kitty—”
“No, I get it,” she cut in. “It’s you, not me. The timing is off. You just want to be friends. You don’t have to say more. Really, please don’t say anymore.” She hung up before giving him the chance.
He nearly called her back. He considered reversing everything he’d just said, showing up on her doorstep, and telling her he’d make sure Coyote Glen succeeded just to show her that her suspicions were unfounded.
But doing that sort of thing when he had no guarantee of a future with her, that was too much to ask. He had to think of his brothers. He couldn’t torch their livelihood to prove his intentions were real. She had to be reasonable. And certainly once she cooled down, she would see his point. She would agree with him that this separation was for the best.
If she cared about their relationship, she ought to be willing to stick around after next September to work on it. And if she didn’t care, then dating each other for months beforehand would only make things harder for both of them.
Chapter Twenty
The next fewdays passed for Kate in a blur of ranch work with intermittent bingeing on chocolate chip cookies. Her heart felt like it had been punctured and was still raw and wounded. She painted the walls of her grandparents’ house and ordered fabric for new curtains and throw pillows. It was the interior designers’ equivalent of post-breakup cutting your bangs.
Even though she needed help with the livestock, she didn’t call any of the day laborers Landon suggested. Not because she didn’t trust them. She was just too proud to take Landon’s help. She hired different ones.
The fact that Landon had broken up with her after she’d called to give him a second chance—it still stung. Granted, he’d said he was just breaking up with her until the ranch issue was resolved, but that was clearly an attempt to let her down easy. He hadn’t denied that he would date other women or told her not to date other men. You didn’t do that if you were still interested in a person.
Not surprisingly, when she called her parents and let them know that Landon had dumped her because he thought she didn’t trust him, they weren’t sympathetic.
“It’s for the best,” her father said. “You don’t want to stay in Arizona anyway.”
It didn’t feel like it was for the best. It felt like she’d been hit with buckshot and pain was slowly filling her chest.
“You can always find someone else,” her mother added.
Not likely. She had no desire to check out the single scene in Bisbee. People in the community still treated her with chilly indifference, and no one at church spoke to her beyond what was necessary. She would’ve stayed home on Sundays, except she didn’t want Landon to think he’d chased her away.
Her new goal was to work so hard on the ranch and make it so successful that she showed Landon and the entire town that she had what it took to conquer any task in front of her. And she’d hold her head high while she did it. She didn’t need any of them. Then she’d go back to Washington away from this hot place and these cold people, back to her real life.
She hired one of the day laborers to come out and help with tasks she couldn’t do by herself but continued on with the rest of the chores, building both calluses and muscles. With this job, she’d never need to go to the gym again.
While her father looked for the right foreman to hire, November plodded along into December. Kate saw Landon each Sunday sitting in a pew with his brothers and niece, looking stoic and not nearly as miserable as she felt.
Each time her glance strayed to those broad shoulders and his sun-kissed hair, she felt the pangs of loss. She missed him. Pathetic really. She should have more pride than that.
Angelina showed up at church when she wasn’t working and generally made a point to sit near Landon and flirt with him as much as she could. He was friendly back. Everyone in the congregation seemed to love Angelina. As far as Kate could tell, everyone in Landon’s family did too. Angelina was so effortlessly an insider. Maybe Landon would change his mind about her friend status.
Jealousy was a sin that was becoming common on Sunday, as was coveting her neighbor—not anything he had, just him.
If Landon passed Kate in the church foyer—and okay, she might have lingered after the service every week so he would bump into her—he would stop to speak to her for a few minutes. This Sunday it was, “What have you been up to?”
“Pruning citrus.” A couple trees were so laden with fruit that some of their branches were breaking.
“Looks like your lemon tree put up a fight.” He ran a finger across her arm where several scratches were fading. His touch sent all sorts of shivers through her. He probably knew it too.